The Gregory Legacy, Chapter 26

Welcome back to The Gregory Legacy, where we produce sims with the most awful personalities who I nonetheless eventually manage to find lovable somehow. I’m also writing and playing my turn of the joint legacy I Hart Space!, which I share with my friend Kristina, so updates are a little irregular right now, but here is one today. Last chapter, heiress Faye went collecting and made a wish at the well, Laurel worked on the Spring Challenge, Aaron finished a couple of aspirations, and Adrian grew up into a pretty spectacularly terrible teenager, which seems to be my brand of sim. Let’s see what they’re getting into these days . . .

Dayna suddenly finds that she likes Adrian so much better than before. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but something that changed recently just makes her not hate him quite as much. Not like those other . . . children. *shudder* 

As much as I like Dayna, I will be really happy if the child-hating dies out of the family with her. I don’t want to jinx myself though, because it would be just like Faye to pick that trait up just to spite me. Also, this is about the closest I can ever get to a family meal. I like the island, but it means that sims don’t always sit together at the dinner table. Also, Laurel and Kori have jobs that end late in the evening, so they’re still in bed on this day.

Hurray! By harvesting plants from her mom’s garden, Faye quickly satisfied the “collect 25 collectibles” requirement and completed her Curator aspiration. She’s still a pretty young teen, too, so that’s great. See? I like her better already despite her being such a pain in the butt. Her next aspiration is Angler Ace, because I haven’t done that one before and since she loves the outdoors, it should keep her happy.

There’s a bunch of fishing spots around Oakenstead, of course, so Faye is able to burn through the first two levels of the aspiration pretty quickly. Apparently just going from one spot on the river to the next to the beach across the way counts as fishing in 3 different spots, which is cool with me. I thought at this point that maybe this aspiration would go as quickly as Curator did.

Oh man. Oh dear. No, no, no. Aaron’s end-of-life notification popped up, and even though I was somewhat expecting it, I was not prepared. I had been pretty unhappy when Aaron was declared heir, but I’ve come to love him so much, and he really is the perfect father and grandfather. I’m not ready for him to die, but he’s already had one youth potion so there’s nothing I can do about it. Instead, I had him go around and say his goodbyes. First up was his one true love since their teens, Dayna.

Aaron got to visit with and razz his baby brother, Henry, while working on a final upgrade to the rocket. He’s not going to finish the upgrades, so someone else will have to take up his rocket science mantle one day.

Aaron even got to say goodbye to his mother, which is a little weird since supposedly he’s joining her. Maybe she’s welcoming him? I don’t know.

He of course made sure to spend some time with his heiress and only daughter. Laurel and Aaron have always had a great relationship, as he has with all his kids, but remaining in the house together has only strengthened their father-daughter bond.

Aaron also made sure to hit the next generation and showed Faye some affection during a break from her fishing. He looks so sad here. Really it’s because he needs to pee badly, but I like to think he’s actually just sad he won’t get to see his granddaughter mature and take over the legacy fully. He would actually care about stuff like that.

In the middle of all this sadness, other stuff is going on. I mentioned last chapter that Laurel’s garden harvesting and Faye’s collecting netted us the whole egg collection, so here’s that new bunny recolor. I like it. We were still working on the growfruit as of these pictures.

Kori keeps the oddest hours. She works long days as a secret agent of some level (I don’t remember which she was at around this time), but even when everyone else usually manages to sleep at least until 6 a.m., Kori often gets up around 4 and helps herself to some leftover breakfast. She’s definitely an early bird.

My sims would not stop mourning their distant relations, especially ones they’ve never met, and since I’m focusing on Faye a lot, I let the younger kids run around on free will and they always end up out here, making themselves sad. Therefore, I took away the door. We still have a mausoleum on the property with all the urns, and they still walk out here all the freakin’ time, but because they can’t actually get to the urns, they don’t get sad. Instead they just stand around all confused for a little bit before wandering off to play with the clay or watch the fish. Really, my sims are terrible at amusing themselves. Also, I’ve noticed that sims in the vicinity of my two cowplant skeletons get the playful moodlet. Is that supposed to happen? Can anyone confirm? It’s quite odd.

Yay! More parties. Yeah, yay. Kori still has so many parties left to throw. Today we are throwing a goodbye party in Aaron’s honor, and yes, it is an incognito party. Why? Why not, I ask you! This one is being held at The Narwhal Arms in Windenburg, which has quickly become one of my favorite spots to send sims for some reason. I realized I was running a big risk of Aaron dying during the party, but I decided to go for it. The costumes were predictably hilarious, especially Faye as a clown. Believe me, I had a good giggle over that.

Inside the party, Hannah gets a hug from her uncle Luke, who is, I believe, a masseur. SimJ is the grim reaper, which is pretty hilarious since she’s a good sim.

Adrian the astronaut found a fellow teen and astroanaut, Tiara (real name), but much like with his birthday party, he is apparently horrible at social interactions. As soon as he tried to talk to her, Tiara whipped out her homework and ignored him. Ouch. Turned down for trigonometry. That’s got to sting. For a sim with a little charisma skill, Adrian apparently has the least actual charisma possible. No one likes him. Except his family, of course, and even that can be tenuous, depending on how much evil yelling and insulting he's doing.

Henry showed up as an appropriately pissed-off looking mismatched hotdog. There are so many hotdogs at this party.

Hannah: “Ooh, great selfie of us as hotdogs.”

Aimee: “I know, right? Possibly the greatest picture ever taken.”

In this picture, Adrian is again attempting, and failing, to socialize with the apparently quite studious Tiara. Also, I dropped in a kitchen so Kori could make hamburger cake for the party requirements, and that’s what everyone in the background is getting ready to eat. The party was a success and fulfilled the final requirement to have a party at a unique location. Now Kori can move on to . . . throwing even more parties. Yay. At least she’s finally on the fourth level.

I haven’t mentioned it, but the day after she grew up, Aimee was invited to join Partihaus. I have no idea why they thought an 8-year-old would be a good member in a flirting, drinking, and dancing club, but I let her join anyway. They started a gathering and showed up right at the end of the party. Aimee wanted to support her club, so she danced since that’s the only approved activity she can actually do right now. Please excuse the outlined sim, by the way. I wasn't watching my mouse cursor, apparently, and didn't notice it until much later, but this was the only picture I took of Aimee dancing.

Aaron: “Well, that was an interesting party, Kori. I’m not really sure how I feel about these costumes, though.”

Kori: “It was in your honor, you know. We wanted to send you off in a way that showed how much we value and respect you.”

Aaron: “Oh yes. I have never felt more valued and respected than I do in this mismatched hot dog costume right now. Thank you so much for this honor.”

Kori: “My pleasure.”

Aaron apparently hadn’t had enough partying, because he headed down to the basement, where I have a mostly empty party room with just a bar and stereo, to dance by himself for a while. He did give me a fright when I paused and saw him like this. I thought he was starting the death animation down there by himself with everyone else upstairs, but no, he was just boogying down.

Adrian: “Mwa ha ha.”

What’s the deal, Adrian?

“Oh, just trolling a forum.”

How so?

“I told the official forum that toddlers were coming soon and produced a photoshopped pic of toddlers that are attached to slightly larger bassinets to drum up more drama.”

You’re sick, man. That’s taking evil too far.

My sims love clay. I actually bought four or five of them and put them in the playroom, but they’ve been pretty well dispersed throughout the house by now, so there’s often someone playing with one of them at any given time. Even Nathan likes to play with it from beyond the grave. I just hoped that he wouldn’t somehow put it in his spectral inventory and steal it. Luckily, he did not, but he did move it out to a patio table. The clays move around more than some of my sims.

Everyone, including Nathan, was gathering around for Hannah's birthday early the next morning. Aaron had just finished baking her cake and putting candles on it when he walked to the middle of the kitchen and waved at me.
 

"This is a nice spot. I think I'll just lie down here. Yeah, nice cool tile."

For the record, I am still not ready for this. I was even more gutted than when Marjorie died, because Aaron had become one of my favorite sims in this version of the game. 
 

I was not the only one feeling sad, however, and by the time Grim showed up, everyone was bawling their eyes out over Aaron's death.
 

And so ended the life of Aaron Gregory, third generation heir to the Gregory name, father of four, grandfather of four, beloved sim. His last earthly action was to bake a birthday cake for his granddaughter, which tells you everything you need to know about him. He may have been hot-headed and destroyed the dollhouse a few times, but he more than made up for that with his many virtues. Rest in peace, but not too restfully, because I'd like to see you haunt soon. 
 

Hannah's birthday cake was just sitting there and her bar was shining green. I guess it wouldn't have mattered if she became sad from aging up without a cake since she, like everyone else in the family, was already very sad from the death, but I decided to let her have her cake anyway. The family, despite sporting strong moodlets since they all - even Kori - had great relationships with Aaron, celebrated as best they could. Faye, of course, was the exception. Even Grim managed a noisemaker, but Faye was already trying to head out to the mausoleum. 
 

Happy birthday, Hannah. At least you're cute.
"Yeah, thanks. Some birthday."

Ugh, this is awful. Notice that Faye and Adrian are making a beeline for the mausoleum. They're not going to get anywhere because the door is still missing, but they're still trying anyway. 
 

Here's Hannah's artsy makeover. Her new aspiration is Painter Extraordinaire and her trait is insane, to go along with hot-headed. That's my girl. That's the Gregory family personality I recognize. Hannah probably looks the most like Laurel out of the four kids, so of course I think she's adorable. She kept her hat, because it just didn't seem like her without it. 
 

The makeshift party wrapped up very quickly, since everyone was miserable. Dayna had retired to bed right away with her nearly unbearable widow moodlet, and Kori tried to cheer Laurel up some. 
 

It didn't work. Laurel spent a good amount of time crying it out, as did nearly everyone else. 
 

The next days were so tough. Everyone had loved Aaron so much, and they just couldn't focus on anything, not even the clay, without remembering how much they missed him. Adrian's happy moodlets over other sims' misery couldn't even overcome this sadness. 
 

From being mean and evil, Adrian constantly wanted to say mean things to his family and prank them. That wasn't happening, and he also wanted an enemy, so I let him make one when Dennis Kim came over to visit with his neighbors. He did not receive a warm welcome. 
 

Pretty soon, Eric Lewis was bearing the brunt of Adrian's grief- and personality-driven aggravation. He didn't take it as readily as his father-in-law, however, and was soon pushing back against Adrian. It turned out that Adrian's heart wasn't really in this after all, because he backed down once Eric started mocking him. 
 

I sent Dayna to work and I'm not really sure why, because with her strong sad moodlets, she only made maybe a millimeter's worth of progress on her job bar, but it did get her out of the house for a bit. As she came home from work, an elder with a raised hand again scared me, but she was merely signalling hunger. 

Well, this is depressing as all hell. I tried to distract myself with Faye's aspiration, but it didn't really work. Losing beloved sims is the worst. Anyway, here are the gummy fish and the bone fish. The final step of Faye's aspiration requires her to catch 20 unique fish types, and since the fish they have in their two aquariums apparently count for that, I thought these two might help, but they didn't count. I guess Faye has to catch those remaining fish herself. At least that will give her something to do, but that will have to come next time. 

This seems as good a place as any to stop. Next time will hopefully be less sad, thought Dayna is slated to go soon too. Circle of life, my friends. So check back next time to see the Gregory family hopefully bounce back, the kids continue growing, and probably more parties for Kori. Thanks for reading, and check in with me at SiMania and Boolprop!